


the shore

by phyripo



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Christmas Morning, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 03:32:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5523869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phyripo/pseuds/phyripo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helle has always loved the sea, loves living this close to it, despite the dangers that come with the situation. The air is always sharper here than inland, carrying with it cold from the east, the smell of salt or faraway forests. The sea brings stories that no one would ever hear otherwise. And sometimes, the sea brings wandering mermaids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the shore

**Author's Note:**

> Secret Santa for [matistama](http://matistama.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I tried to use all your prompts, even if it didn't start out that way, but the dancing got a bit lost. Still, I do hope you like it.  
> Domestic fluff is what I write best but I remembered that too late ;////;
> 
> Merry Christmas!
> 
> [points at word count] I'm so proud
> 
> Oh and, Helle is Denmark and Elise is Estonia (:

The weather’s getting colder. Winter has claimed the land.

The sea just seems wild and unforgiving as ever, Helle thinks. She looks out over the dark waves with her hair blowing into her face, braids slapping against her cheeks. She has not seen Elise in a long time, not since the weather turned, and although she doesn’t like to admit it, that worries her.

The sea sprays salt into her face, and Helle retreats, lifting her skirt and clambering back over the rocky shore. Elise will come back. She always has so far.

Helle goes home and busies herself with preparing for the rest of the winter, as she’s been doing for weeks now. Snow is rare, this close to the sea, but even so, it can get unpleasantly cold. She mends warm clothes and prepares more food, and thinks about Elise despite her best intentions. She’s all alone, out there in the sea, and Helle doesn’t know if her kind celebrate Yule. Maybe she’ll have to teach her about it. She grins to herself. Elise would like that.

The next day, it is raining so hard that Helle doesn’t see a chance to walk to the coast, to see if Elise has reappeared. Maybe merfolk hibernate, she starts to think. She doesn’t really know much about Elise’s kin, does she?

It’s a wonder she knows about Elise to begin with. No one else knows she exists, that Helle knows of.

They met during the summer, after the solstice. Helle’s brother saw her first, sitting on the rocks on the shore near Helle’s house and looking around in wonder, short blonde hair plastered to her head. He had not seen that she wasn’t human. To be honest – neither had Helle, until after her brother had left and the mysterious woman on the shore had still been there. She was like a supernatural appearance even then. It was hard to resist the urge to investigate, and so Helle didn’t.

“Hello?” she called over the ever-strong wind. “Who are you?”

The woman perked up, looking over her shoulder. She did not answer.

Helle picked her way across the rocks. She noticed now that the woman was naked, or at least was not wearing anything on her upper body. She didn’t seem bothered by it. Stranger and stranger.

“I…” The woman faltered, looking slightly fearful as Helle came ever closer. “I am Elise?”

Her legs were submerged. Maybe she had been bathing? But… In the sea? Her name sounded like a question and her Danish like a song. Helle spun stories in her mind. The woman could have fallen off a ship. A ship from the east, from Sweden or from the Baltic region, swallowed by the sea, Elise the only survivor. Washed up on the shore without knowledge of where she was, maybe even who she was.

“I’m Helle! Don’t be afraid.”

“Helle.” She said the name as if she had never heard it before, despite it being quite common.

“Where are you from?” Helle asked loudly. She was close to her now.

“I live…” Elise started. “I live over there.” She gestured at the sea, to the east.

“Ah,” Helle said. That did not explain much. She stepped over a large rock, and suddenly everything became clear.

Elise was not human. Her legs weren’t submerged, because she _didn’t have_ legs. She had a tail where they should be, like a giant fish. It shimmered in the shallow water, catching Helle’s eye irrevocably.

“Oh,” Helle now said. She did not know how to react to this. What if Elise was a goddess in disguise? What if— What if she was a witch? What if she had come to punish the ones who chose the new religion spreading through the land?

“Hello,” said Elise.

Helle bowed slightly. Elise bowed back.

“Why are— Why are you here?” Helle asked.

Elise smiled, looking, for all the world, a little sheepish. “Curiosity. But I must confess, I did not intend to stay. I never meant for you to see me. For anyone. The tide…”

“Ah,” said Helle, again. She seemed so normal, so human, if one forgot the tail. Getting stuck on a bunch of sharp rocks because you wanted to know what lay beyond them – that sounded like something Helle would do.

“Do you live there? On the land?”

“Hm, yes?”

“Does it have a name? The land?”

“The land? Denmark. You’re in Denmark.”

“Denmark.” This, too, said like a word foreign to her.

They stared at each other, wind whipping around them. Elise’s hair was dry now. Her eyes were the color of the sea on a calm summer day.

“I think I might stay here for a while,” she said. “It’s nice.”

And so she did stay, showing up on the shore every other day, full of questions for Helle, who was hesitant at first but didn’t take long to warm up to this strange creature, so human and yet so completely alien. The most mundane things fascinated Elise – what Helle ate, how she transported herself, how her house had been built, the gods she worshipped. Everything was interesting to her. She found things on the bottom of the sea sometimes, artifacts of human life, and had Helle explain what they were for. Helle, for her part, only managed to find out that Elise’s family lived more to the east, and that she had left them behind. She was not very keen on talking about them, it seemed. Helle once didn’t see her for five long days after she pressed too much.

Helle liked Elise. Even so, she didn’t tell anyone in the village nearby about her friend. Someone would tell the Jarl, and he always wanted everything for himself. Helle doubted he would treat Elise well, and she didn’t want to lose her.

But now, she has vanished. Maybe she’s gone back to her family. Helle doesn’t hope so. She’d miss her.

After repairing the last hole in her warmest dress, Helle looks outside and decides to walk to the shore.

Elise still isn’t there. Helle sits on a rock and looks out over the water.

She’s always loved the sea, loves living this close to it, despite the dangers that come with the situation. The air is always sharper here than inland, carrying with it cold from the east, the smell of salt or faraway forests. The sea brings stories that no one would ever hear otherwise. And sometimes, the sea brings wandering mermaids. Helle would love to see the home Elise has made for herself, down there. She has said that the sunlight can just reach it. It must look beautiful.

Elise could see _her_ house, Helle muses. She’s strong enough to carry her all the way there, if they only could get past the rocks.

With a sigh, Helle lifts herself from the rock and goes back home. She must feed her chickens, prepare for Yule.

The days drag on much like that until four days before the winter solstice, when Helle walks to the shore, as is her habit, and sees a familiar pale figure among the rocks.

She’s there. Helle sighs in relief, even as her heart skips a beat. She’s there, leaning back on her hands and seemingly unbothered by the biting wind. Helle calls out to her, and Elise waves.

“Where have you been?” Helle shouts before she’s reached the mermaid. “You worried me!”

“I—” Elise starts, and then she stops abruptly when Helle drops to her knees and throws her arms around her. She’s cold, and her skin feels not-entirely-human, but she’s here and that’s all that matters. A startled laugh makes her shoulders shake, and her arms hesitantly curl around Helle.

“Are you alright?” Helle holds her at arm’s length, looking her up and down. She _seems_ alright. Her tail is mesmerizing as it ever is, shifting blue-grey-purple under the water.

“I am fine,” Elise says, smiling. “Sorry for worrying you. I was… Away.”

Helle nods encouragingly, hoping for more explanation.

“Have I ever told you Elise is not my real name?” she asks instead.

“Hm, no?”

“I picked it. I heard people using this name on the land. My real name… Is hard to pronounce above the water.”

“Oh! Try to! I want to learn.”

And so Helle forgets about Elise’s deflection until dusk, when she’s back home, preparing food. Stupid. Elise knows her too well, knows she is too easily distracted. Oh well. She can ask again tomorrow.

The next morning, the wind brings Helle’s brother with it. He’s long forgotten about the woman he saw on the shore this summer, and he’s asking Helle if she’ll come to celebrate Yule. Helle loves Yule, she does, but she thinks of Elise, and how she will have no one there if Helle goes with her brother, who lives further up north.

Maybe it isn’t smart to let her life revolve around a woman who’s half a fish, but Helle laughs and tells her brother she’ll be there for the summer solstice. He doesn’t seem bothered, but then again, he hardly ever does. They share that trait.

Elise shows up again the day before the solstice. She compliments Helle’s hair, explaining most of her kin keep their hair short, cut with sharp rocks, so as to avoid getting it stuck in seaweed or stones or catching fish in it. Helle spends some time sitting cross-legged on a flat rock, making tiny braids in Elise’s hair. There’s nothing to secure them with, so they fall out almost immediately, and Elise can’t see how she looks, but she laughs despite that, a sound that’s also not-entirely-human, but pleases Helle anyway.

“I heard your people have a celebration around this time,” Elise says, looking up at Helle, curious.

“We do, around the winter solstice.”

“When the days are shortest, yes?”

Of course, the distinction between day and night isn’t as clear in the sea as it is on land. Helle doesn’t really know how Elise measures time, if she has years or months at all. Maybe merfolk calculate time by the currents.

“And what do you celebrate?”

“Oh, a lot of things. We worship Odin, I told you about Odin, didn’t I?” She looks at her hands, wondering how much longer the traditional Yule celebrations will last, what with Christianity coming up from the south. “It’s the time when most spirits wander the earth, it is said.”

“Yes,” Elise says. “And you… You make sacrifices, and you make merry, don’t you?”

Helle looks down at her in surprise, and she smiles, showing her pointed canine teeth.

“I heard,” she explains. “While I was away. I hoped I could surprise you by learning something about your people. And I hoped maybe I could celebrate with you, but I think the merrymaking that you do is hard without legs.” Her smile grows crooked, but not less charming. She’s not apologetic about being a mermaid, and why would she be? It’s who she is.

Helle’s heart swells with affection for Elise and she clambers down the rock to sit next to her. Her cloak is getting wet, but it will dry.

“We can find a way if you really want to,” she says, softly now that they’re so close. Elise smells like the sea, fresh and familiar.

“You know, it’s much easier to see you like this,” Elise says. A tiny braid flops into her eye, and Helle pushes it away with her thumb. Maybe Elise’s vision is accustomed to working under the water. That would make sense.

“Is that good? I might be disappointing from up close,” Helle jokes.

Elise smiles. “No, it’s good.”

Helle’s own hair flops into Elise’s face, and they both laugh.

“But about Yule…” Helle prompts.

“I just wanted to be part of your life for a little while. You have done so much for me, taught me about your customs and your people, but I have nothing of my own to offer you, so I thought I could offer you something of yourself…”

She wrings her hands together in a gesture so human that Helle can’t help but grab them, try to warm them between her own – in vain, because her own hands are freezing in the cold, damp air.

“You don’t have to give me anything. You can tell me about your people if you want to, but I don’t need anything. You’re my friend.”

Their eyes meet, and Elise smiles again. “You are my friend, too.”

“Good.”

Elise nods seriously, making Helle laugh and throw her arms around the mermaid’s bare shoulders, pushing them together. Her skin is still cold, but Helle doesn’t mind. She presses her cheek against Elise’s, and Elise breathes out over her ear, relaxing her body and wrapping her arms around Helle’s waist, underneath her cloak.

“Come tonight,” Helle whispers. “I can make a fire on the rocks and we’ll ward off the spirits together.”

“Yes,” Elise breathes. “I would like that.”

Helle pulls away with a grin. “I will see you tonight, then.”

“Tonight.”

Overwhelmed with affection, Helle presses a kiss to Elise’s cheek and practically skips back over the shore.

The evening is clear and dark. Helle starts a fire as promised. It’s low tide, so it’s safe from the water. The air is still, like it is waiting for the solstice as much as the Danes. It seems charged, somehow.

Elise is silent as she heaves herself up on the rocks. Helle helps her up without a word, touching the scales of her tail in an almost reverent way. She thinks about how she thought Elise might be a goddess when they first met. It doesn’t seem unlikely now, looking at her in the firelight. Her hair practically lights up, and her eyes sparkle. She is beautiful.

They don’t say anything for a long time, but they don’t need to.

The wind whispers through Helle’s hair. She wraps her cloak tighter around herself. Elise makes small, soothing splashing sounds in the water. Her tail shines purple.

“I think I like Yule,” Elise says eventually, and Helle laughs because objectively, this is a very bad Yule celebration.

“Me too,” she says despite that, because to her, this is the best Yule she has ever had.

The wind whispers.

The wind actually whispers.

“Denmark,” it whispers, caressing Helle’s ear.

* * *

“Denmark.”

And Denmark opens his eyes, blinking at the ceiling of his bedroom.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Estonia whispers. He smiles when Denmark turns his head to face him.

“Yeah,” Denmark croaks, frowning. “God, I had a weird dream.”

“Hm?” Estonia reaches for his glasses on the nightstand. Usually he’s the one with the weird dreams.

“Ya were… We were both women? And you were a mermaid?”

Estonia is familiar with dreams in which people are another gender, but mermaids are new to him. It does sound interesting. He rests his head on the pillow. Denmark shifts next to him, rests his head on his shoulder.

They don’t stay that way for long – Denmark doesn’t like staying still, never has. He squirms away, clambers out of bed. He puts his own glasses on and stretches languorously, making his back crack.

“It’s Christmas!” he says, and it seems very loud in the morning gloom. “Estonia! It’s Christmas!”

Ah, so he remembers.

Denmark yanks the curtains open. There is no snow – it’s much too warm for snow this year; Estonia himself has barely gotten any either – but he isn’t deterred. Denmark is hardly ever deterred. Estonia likes that about him.

The Dane pushes his hair from his forehead and bounces over to Estonia’s side of the bed.

He’s very lucky that they’re both morning people, Estonia thinks. Not everyone can handle Denmark in the mornings.

“Christmas!”

“Yes, I know.” Estonia sits up and swings his legs out of the bed. He’s only wearing one sock. Where the other one has gone, he doesn’t know.

Denmark’s glasses nearly bounce off his face when he pulls at Estonia’s arms to get him out of bed. It’s endearing, the eagerness with which he still looks forward to things like Christmas. He’s a source of energy for Estonia, who can only hope he can be some sort of resting point for Denmark, someone who can calm him down when he needs it.

“Oh, what time’s it?”

“About nine.” Rather late, for them.

“We gotta make sure everything’s alright for when everyone else comes!” He walks to the door. Estonia trails after him. “Hey, Lithuania’s still comin’, right? He said he’d let ya know.”

They walk down the stairs, into the warm living room. Estonia had woken up earlier, as he always does, to turn on the heating and use the toilet.

“Yes, he’s coming.”

“Great! It’ll be awesome to have everyone together.”

And so they go through their morning rituals. Estonia flattens his hair and Denmark spikes his, puts his contact lenses in. Estonia turns the radio on, puts some bread rolls in the oven but forgets to turn the oven on. Denmark turns the oven on. They eat the bread rolls while they’re too hot and burn their mouths.

While he’s putting away the dishes in the kitchen, Estonia feels Denmark circle his arms around him from behind and rest his chin on his shoulder. He’s silent now, just watching. Pressing tiny kisses to the skin underneath Estonia’s ear, making him laugh.

“Ya make a really good mermaid,” Denmark says, and Estonia laughs some more.

“Good to know. And do you make a good woman?”

“Ya betcha. The prettiest woman in all the land.”

He sways them from side to side, to the rhythm of the music.

“I’m not surprised,” Estonia says.

Denmark kisses the side of his neck, and Estonia tilts his head back to press their lips together. The angle is awkward, but really, it’s the thought that matters, isn’t it?

“Hey,” Denmark whispers against his lips, “merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

* * *

Somewhere, Helle hears the wind whisper unfamiliar songs about Yule.


End file.
